Recent items from Olga Yashkova

Need for Coverage and Capacity Drives the Demand for Small Cells and HetNet Test Equipment

Service providers continue to increase their investments into the heterogeneous network (HetNet) infrastructure by deploying small cells, carrier Wi-Fi, and distributed antenna systems (DAS) to manage increasing capacity and coverage requirements. In addition, the market is moving in the direction of the centralized RAN (C-RAN) architecture that centralizes baseband functionality to be shared across a large number of distributed radio nodes. Compared to traditional base stations, C-RAN provides substantial performance and cost-related advantages, such as baseband pooling, enhanced coordination between cells, virtualization, network extensibility, and energy efficiency.
Networks are never the same as each network environment is unique. Each service provider network will include densely-populated metro areas that require different types of public and business services. In addition, a typical network can include a rural area with a small scattered population, a shopping mall, or a stadium. The main task of a HetNet is to address these diversified needs and provide continuous network coverage.
A HetNet can be defined as network that uses small cells/Wi-Fi/DAS and macros in the same network.

Smartphone users spend nearly 80% of their daily device use time on non-voice activities. Traditional capacity expansion is not enough; mobile data traffic will continue to grow exponentially and will not be met by traditional network growth.
Service provider need to know where the network coverage is critical, as customer churn is extremely expensive and poor coverage as well as poor service are the top drivers of churn. Service Providers desire to obtain better, richer, and more detailed information about the quality of the coverage, and for now, there is an enormous demand for a drive test solution that communicates virtually with other tools.
Thus, the demand for wireless network testing solutions is on the rise.
Drive testing is vital for mobile operators and is conducted to discover coverage gaps in networks. Drive tests help mobile operators maintain and improve the quality of their network, for instance, by recognizing the need for tuning network parameters in order to achieve better coverage.
A conventional drive test is a manual process that is primarily done by engineers in the field by collecting radio measurements. Such tests tend to demand significant time and human labor and are costly. The concept of Minimization of Drive Test (MDT) emerged from an idea to use each device that is active in the network. This means that standard mobile phones should be used for measurements to provide data for the operators. The work on automated drive test was started in 3GPP with the purpose to create MDT in March 2009.
The Global Wireless Network Test Equipment Market study offers the detailed market analysis of the following segments: benchmarking consisting of drive test, walk test and crowdsourcing; monitoring: active test, passive test, OSS (CM/PM/FM); field trials, acceptance, optimization and troubleshooting: drive and walk test, OSS traces with Geo-location, Site Testing (antenna, cabling, PIM, OTA testers), OSS (CM/PM/FM), passive probes and SON.
The key questions that this study will answer are as follows:
• Which are the major participants in the global wireless network test equipment market?
• What are the sizes of the market segments? How are they likely to change during the forecast period?
• What are the major trends influencing market growth?
• What are the major challenges that vendors need to overcome to enhance growth?
• What are the market dynamics from a regional perspective?
This study provides revenue forecasts from 2016 until 2023, market share analysis and product analysis. The geographic forecast as well as end-user analysis are included in the scope of this study.

5G is expected to help fully realize the benefits of IoT. With billions of devices expected to be connected to the Internet, wireless networks must evolve drastically and test equipment have to be at the cutting edge of the technology.

The trend towards Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is driving virtualization, as this market segment is growing at high double-digit growth rates up to 75% year on year. The move from hardware to software is driving NFV adoption.

LTE-U offers what end users like about 4G LTE mobile broadband: high speed, improved downloading and streaming, smooth hand-offs, and secure, reliable connections. In addition, it is made to work using unlicensed spectrum.

Wireless standards are developing rapidly and keeping up with them is becoming a challenge for test equipment vendors. The 802.11n was introduced the industry to multiple input multiple output (MIMO), 3X3, and 4X4, while new .11n products bring new opportunities for test equipment vendors.

Communications service providers are concentrating on mobile traffic Wi-Fi offload strategies. The Wi-Fi technology, 802.11ac, is critical to this task as it is important to ensure that the quality of Wi-Fi networks becomes carrier-grade. This research service assesses the global Wi-Fi test equipment market. It provides a quantitative model that describes the revenue of the Wi-Fi test equipment market by region, application, and end user. It also includes market drivers, restraints, challenges, and areas of opportunity. It contains revenue forecasts and market share analysis. The following segments are covered in this analysis, namely research and development, manufacturing, and post-deployment test equipment.

I expect 5G to steal the show at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC). 5G has been a topic of discussion for a while already and it is becoming more prominant with carriers such as SKTelecom and Verizon Communications, just to name a few. Meanwhile, AT&T recently announced its trial plans for 5G in 2016. The carrier is planning to conduct field...

I expect 5G to steal the show at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC). 5G has been a topic of discussion for a while already and it is becoming more prominant with carriers such as SKTelecom and Verizon Communications, just to name a few. Meanwhile, AT&T recently announced its trial plans for 5G in 2016. The carrier is planning to conduct field...

LTE and LTE-A technologies success have become the wireless communication standard by delivering mobile broadband data and high-definition voice. This success has lead to the commitment of government authorities to select LTE as the fundamental technology for their next-generation public safety networks. With the United States playing a leading rol...

LTE and LTE-A technologies success have become the wireless communication standard by delivering mobile broadband data and high-definition voice. This success has lead to the commitment of government authorities to select LTE as the fundamental technology for their next-generation public safety networks. With the United States playing a leading rol...

VoLTE is expected to enhance profitability of network operators by offering them various other revenue streams through Rich Communication Services such as video sharing and file transfers.
Up till December 2015, there were 40 operators who had launched VoLTE services in 27 countries.
While incorporating this technology in their networks is a huge...

Moving from 2G to 3G to LTE, mobile communication technology has achieved rapid progress in the past few years, paving the way for innovation and developments in the wireless communication industry. With a rapid growth in the number of mobile subscribers and a proliferation of mobile devices and tablets, human-to machine and machine-to-machine comm...